Nature and Tradition as Enemies of Individual Happiness

Victor Argonov

An essay on
instincts, traditional morality and religion united against your real
interests

1. A happy person as a failure of
evolution

We, humans, are a product of biological
evolution. This is why it's hard to realize that evolution is also
our enemy – an enemy of any individuality. Evolution does not have
a goal to make every person happy, nor does it aim that we live long.
What evolution means is that every population should reproduce and
multiply itself to the maximum and drive out its weaker rivals.
Destruction of the natural environment is another manifestation of
the laws of evolution: we do it because we are strong enough. The
same reason underlies why we have multiplied ourselves to 7 billions.
Due to our intellect we have computers and nukes now, because
evolution rewards strength. Nonetheless, some of us still live in
poverty and hunger, because these issues don't count much for
maximization of the population.

By the laws of wild
nature, a population is successful if it spends all of its resources
on increasing its number further on. For us humans it means that any
economic growth should be used for having more and more children.
Ideally, evolution “wants” that we live our whole life in
poverty, give birth to as many children as possible, and die
immediately after the end of the fertile period of our life. This is
the world that our instincts are tuned to.

It was already
in Antiquity that people realized the conflict between their desire
to live long and happily and the nature's requirement to be fruitful
and multiply. Since the time when human intellect made it possible to
plan ahead for decades, people want to live long and see the results
of their work. People started to think in concepts of good and bad,
pleasant and unpleasant, and formed an abstract idea of happiness as
a state that is desirable regardless of any circumstances. However,
understanding of these things did not cause us to get out of the game
of evolution. This game had a strong external support. The deadly
conflict between evolution and individual interests has been lasting
already for millennia.

2. The main war in
history

Evolution gets support from instincts, which
keep on dictating us not to value life in itself and happiness in
itself, but just particular kinds of pleasure. First, but not the
only one, of them is the male sexual instinct. It dictates any man to
have sex as much as possible. Even if somebody wants to be
child-free, the desire for sex usually overwhelms. The female
reproduction instinct is even more insidious; it demands to always
choose the most dominant male. This is the way how natural selection
cultivates masculine aggression. In order to limit it, clans and
states were built up. Having many children and giving more resources
to your own clan became necessary for survival. Natural selection
began to work on the level of clans and states. The states formulated
ideologies that reflected the evolution principles: individuality is
nothing, population is everything, happiness and individual survival
is nothing, population size and its survival is everything. It was
just some details that changed; for example, it appeared that
monogamous family is better for the population than the old way of
distributing females between the dominant males only. Philosophies
were created that questioned human's desire to live long and happily.
They talked about “eternal life” in the afterworld and separated
the concepts of good and bad from the ones of pleasant and
unpleasant.

The traditional morality is full of rules that
disregard individual and collective happiness both. The same way as
the laws of wild nature, it cares only about sheer numbers. This is
why it pays so much attention to sex.

In order to optimize
society for rapid growth of the population, the sexual life should be
regulated accordingly. The monogamous family, where the husband is
the master, and the wife cannot even refuse to have sex with him,
appeared to serve this purpose best. The polygamous family came to be
less suitable, since only really strong males could have a family,
and some wives would get less regard than the others. Any sexual
practices not leading to procreation were prohibited. The only
exceptions were highly developed societies that were certain about
their status, such as Athens and Rome. However, even Rome, despite
its tolerance to homosexuality, had laws that required every man to
have children.

The 20th century brought three
unprecedented revolutions: family planning, modern medicine, and mass
Atheism. The spread of contraceptives made it possible to take child
conceiving under control. Atheism made people face the issue of their
mortality again. Medicine prolonged human lifetime significantly.
While in old times a strong man had a choice between dying young in a
battle or dying at almost the same age of an infectious disease, now
the situation has changed.

By the middle of the 20th
century, a new generation grew up that did not want to live according
to the old principles: these people did not like to participate in
wars and did not want to have many children. This generation set
aside aggression and gave more freedom to women. The result was a new
order, such as the woman, not the man, makes a decision to have
children. Paradoxically, women appeared to be less inclined to have
children than the patriarchal society. Especially little they want to
have children of the men that set aside aggression.

It was
first by the end of the 20th century, when billions of people on
Earth realized, what it means to live for their own interests,
instead of the interests of evolution. The world economy showed a
significant growth not just in absolute numbers, but also per
capita.

People managed to outsmart the enemy whom they had
been fighting for millennia. However, the unwise servants of that
enemy are still here. They rarely talk openly about depriving women
of their rights, banning the contraceptives, setting up a population
explosion, or returning men to the old warrior lifestyle. They just
keep on struggling against homosexuals rights, child-free lifestyle,
abortions, and hedonism as a worldview. Strange that some people that
pretend to be supporters of progress can agree with the conservative
agenda on some points. However, such people view technology only as a
source of power for power's sake, disregarding the real interests of
people. I hope that the new generation will throw such ideas away and
put everything in its place.

3. How you can stop
being a slave of nature

You need to always hold in
mind that evolution is your enemy, which acts like a corrupt
politician buying people's votes. A fool either votes the way he got
money for or proudly refuses to take this money. A clever person
takes the money, but votes according to his own interests. This is
because it's stupid to play fair with a cheater. Your intellect is
your main advantage against the enemy that values only brute force.
Take what evolution gives you, but don't do what evolution expects of
you.

If you like aggression, play aggressive computer
games and sports, but don't take part in real wars. If you like sex,
use contraceptives and do what you want, since that patriarchal
morality does not serve your interests anyway. If you want to have
children, take care of your economy first, in order to preserve your
well-being and family life. And so on. The only measure of success is
your own interests. Act for your interests safely and with minimal
expenditures. Avoid those kinds of pleasure that entail risks, such
as unprotected sex, wars, hard drugs, crime, etc., and take all sorts
of safe pleasures, disregarding all the moral dogmas about them. It's
a lie of your enemy that one should pay for one's happiness with pain
and suffering. The only guide for you is your own interests.

Keep
in mind that your enemies are all around, both the external enemies,
such as conservative preachers, and the internal ones, which are your
own instincts. The latter are the most insidious. Don't follow any
call of instincts, if you cannot see that it leads you to happiness.
Don't do anything just because “all people do so” or “this is
natural”. Shit is natural too. (Though disgust to excrements is
another natural instinct, which might be worth questioning as
well.)

However, don't believe to those blaming the “carnal
desires”, because this is a manipulation. Just use the natural in
yourself for your own goals, not for somebody else's. And never
forget, what the nature actually wants from you. Take what the nature
gives you, do what you want, and keep the real situation in mind.
Even when you are enjoying the sights and smells of the natural
landscape around you, keep in mind that it's a world of a total war
between everybody and everything, even between flowers or trees. In
the ugliest city neighborhood you can find more kindness and humanity
than among those cute animals, who kill each other for food. You are
really happy to be born as human at the time when you already can
free yourself from the slavery of nature.

Our natural
evolution has come to the end. We are now at the stage of
self-evolution, although we have not yet modified ourselves
noticeably. However, we have no way back.